By this point in early 2011, Christie was barely a year into his New Jersey governorship, and I’d been covering him for just six weeks. But I had already witnessed him call some state workers “stupid,” argue with a high school student about sending his own kids to private school and falsely claim that cops in Camden, N.J., get their birthdays off as an outrageous union perk. In those six weeks he had appeared on the cover of the New York Times Magazine looking like a bouncer at the Bada Bing, threatened to commit suicide if someone else asked him if he was running for president and used his annual budget address to compare New Jersey under his leadership to the 1980 “miracle on ice” hockey team.

“Look around,” he said. “Much like that band of hard-charging, take-no-prisoners college kids did in Lake Placid 31 years ago, New Jersey is inspiring the nation.”

Since then, I’ve spent the last three years following Christie around the state and across the country, watching him try out strategies for his inevitable 2016 presidential run. CNN’s Jake Tapper may have gotten to ride the bus with Christie on his gubernatorial re-election day, but the local reporters who follow Christie around know him better, from his ability to cultivate a conservative agenda without turning off Democrats to his canny use of celebrity endorsers for cross-cultural appeal.

The local reporters get our own unique treatment—revealing, off-the-record, end-of-summer beers at Jersey Shore bars and profanity-infused Christmas party conversations at the governor’s mansion. But we also get our own unique abuse: We know what it’s like to be put in the “penalty box,” as Christie calls it, briefly shut out from the inner circle for writing something Team Christie hates. And we’ve all been dressed down in State House hallways by Christie’s chief spokesman, Michael Drewniak, an expert at channeling his boss’s fury.

Christie’s press conferences are meaty affairs, providing enough fodder for tweets, blog posts and weekend stories as he lingers long after his press secretary calls out “two more questions!” And his town hall meetings are masterful spectacles in political communication. New Jerseyans literally laugh and cry at these things. It all makes for great copy.

Short end of the stick? Beside the fact that I too often found myself filing stories at rest stops on the New Jersey Turnpike, this was one of the wildest rides in American journalism. Christie likes to tell crowds at press conferences that I must have pissed someone off at the Philadelphia Inquirer to get the Christie beat, but he’s lying. He knows he fulfilled his promise from that first day we met: “We’re going to do our best to keep you entertained.”

***

October 4, 2011

After weeks of rumor and speculation, Christie announces that he will not run for president. At a standing-room only press conference televised nationally from the Trenton State House, he says he has just one regret about not getting in the race: “The only regret I have is that I’ve given such great TV exposure to some of the local reporters. I mean, who’s gonna have Katz on TV now that I’m out of this race? Nobody is gonna have Katz on TV. He won’t be able to get on News 12 for God’s sake.”

John Munson/Star-Ledger

I’m sitting in the back corner of the briefing room. We haven’t made eye contact. He has not called on me to answer a question. I have no idea why he is saying my name on TV, and neither do my friends who are now texting me from California.

Regardless, he’s right: After Christie’s non-announcement I would not get booked on MSNBC or This Week or News 12 New Jersey or any of the shows that had been suddenly, and fleetingly, interested in me, the guy writing a blog called “The Christie Chronicles.” But why is he using his biggest moment of media exposure to date to smack-talk the local beat reporter who follows him around?

Christie uses reporters the same way comedians use those in the front rows at stand-up shows. The back-and-forth amuses him, amuses his staff, amuses us (sometimes). We also act as his foil, tossing the alley-oops for the sound bites that land on the gubernatorial YouTube channel. The clips are emailed to every political reporter in America and likely a few county Republican chairs in Iowa. (I can’t confirm where the emails actually go; I’ve repeatedly asked and been denied those records.)

Christie creates his own reality show, playing up the Jersey guy persona he’s cultivated for the national stage. State workers are on site at his public appearances to tweet out one-liners and attach hashtags (#StrongerThanTheStorm). They are there to film his comments and immediately cut clips on their laptops, email-blasting the best nuggets while I’m still on my way back to the office to file a story. My biggest competition is not other reporters; it is the man himself. He is his own news outlet.

My biggest competition is not other reporters; it is the man himself. He is his own news outlet.

July 9, 2013

Christie’s off-year re-election campaign begins in earnest six months after Superstorm Sandy turbo-boosts his approval ratings from 56 to 77 percent, with Christie taking victory laps around the Jersey Shore with Prince Harry, Matt Lauer, President Obama and other new celebrity friends.

By July, Christie is getting a hero’s welcome. And that’s when I meet Jon Bon Jovi. I’m in Sayreville, the pool reporter for one of Christie’s many visits to towns hit hard by Sandy. It’s Bon Jovi’s hometown (who knew?), and he’s returning to announce $1 million he’s giving to a Sandy relief fund, and so of course there Christie is bear-hugging him on a street corner.

Tim Larsen/Governor's Office

Few things in life are crazier than having five feet of Sandy storm water rush through your front door—but for these residents, Bon Jovi and Chris Christie walking down your street comes close.

The locals clearly didn’t know Christie was coming. They are rushing to their curbs, looking for hugs and handshakes. “Are you running for president?” they ask.

“Oh, we’ll see,” Christie says.

Near the end of the walk, with Bon Jovi still chatting with a kid who plays on the same Pop Warner football team that the rocker once suited up for, Christie looks at me. He wants to talk about my Steve Kornacki tweets.

“You reading my tweets?”

The day before, MSNBC host Kornacki, a former New Jersey political reporter, had told Christie’s Democratic gubernatorial reelection opponent, state senator Barbara Buono, during a live interview that he didn’t think she could win. He later apologized on Twitter. I live-tweeted the whole mis-adventure.

“Governor, she can’t even get a break on MSNBC!”

“You gotta earn your breaks, Matthew, you gotta earn your breaks.”

Allow me to translate: Democratic fundraiser/world-famous rocker Bon Jovi doesn’t just fly in straight from a tour in Europe to meet any old Republican on any old street corner. You gotta earn your breaks, Matthew, you gotta earn your breaks.